Jesus Opium

Tea, silk, porcelain, and opium: to many Westerners these items are
virtualy synonymous with China. Many Chinese of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, however, strongly associated opium with
the West. Professor Kathleen Lodwick makes this eminently clear while
providing a fine overview of the West's introduction of opium to China
and pioneering efforts by Protestant missionaries (mostly British) to
eliminate trade in the substance. Missionaries' success came not in
getting the Chinese to stop using the drug but in publicizing opium's
addictive and pernicious effects. Gradually, missionaries made the
British public aware of the drug's evil side and helped sway the
British government to terminate its participation in the trade.
British's actions came, coincidentally, at a time of emerging Chinese
nationalism, but it was surprisingly energetic and capable late Qing
officials who acted to curtail the domestic production of opium. They
rather than nationalists created an opportunity for the Chinese to
gain British agreement to stop growing opium in India for sale in
China. The author provides thorough coverage through the early
twentieth century although she leaves one wondering if Chinese
anti-opium successes continued. In fact, Chinese efforts at opium
suppression went up in smoke during the fragmented and chaotic warlord
period.

Material in this book is well organized and neatly presented. Early
chapters are devoted to background information about opium, its
introduction to China, amounts shipped (given inconveniently in piculs
instead of in modern measurements), and estimates regarding the number
of people who became addicted to it. The author writes that during
the late nineteenth century guesses range between one and forty
million addicts. If the latter figure is the more accurate of the two
then about ten percent of the population used opium. The great
unanswered and unanswerable question, as Professor Lodwick points out
several times, is why so many users and why at this time. Whatever
the answer, some Protestant missionaries early on observed the sad
effects of the drug on individual Chinese lives and thus saw opium's
use in moral terms. In addition, medical missionaries compiled data
on drug use and shared it via publications like the _Chinese Recorder_
or at missionary conferences and meetings. Missionaries eventually
formed, in 1896, an Anti-Opium League that proved effective in
promoting its position in Britain and in China. Relatively few
Chinese, however, joined the organization for a number of reasons, one
of which had to do with Chinese association of missionaries with
opium. Chinese sometimes embarrassed missionaries by asking them who
imported opium and by calling the drug Jesus opium (p. 34).

The role played by missionaries in banning opium in China therefore
had its limits. Professor Lodwick concludes that for all the
missionaries' efforts and concern, when the great campaign against
opium began it was led by Chinese nationalists, and the Protestant
missionaries, who had crusaded against the drug for so long, were
largely bystanders =85(p. 6). Chinese efforts against opium proved
surprisingly effective given the dynastic decay typically attributed
to the late Qing. Through the efforts of capable officials domestic
production of opium decreased and allowed the Chinese to use the
provisions of a 1907 agreement with Britain to terminate the
importation of opium grown in India. This was a milestone event and
the author thoroughly discusses the agreement to terminate the sale of
opium in China and the myriad difficulties China faced in implementing
it in the chapters entitled The Anti-Opium Lobby Comes of Age
and Successes and Failures of Opium Suppression. This is the
book's most important and illuminating section.

Although this book is of special interest to scholars of late imperial
and modern China, it could easily be used as supplemental reading for
an upper- division course on China and even one on colonialism or
imperialism. The author presents stimulating new material about the
various roles played by Protestant missionaries who took the moral
high ground in spite of the difficulties in doing so. Their unique,
yes, ironic position, together with how the Chinese perceived them,
bring forward many relevant issues for the discussion of China's
plight at this juncture in its modern history.